Shaka was an African warrior leader and creator of the Zulu
military monarchy. His career was a transforming influence in
the history of southern and central Africa.

Shaka
was the son of the Zulu chieftain Senzangakona, but doubt
surrounds his legitimacy, and it seems that his mother, Nandi,
was soon expelled with her child from Senzangakona's household.
Thus Shaka grew up an exile in the territories of neighboring
chiefs. The distortions in his adult personality, his
indifference to suffering, his fierce devotion to his mother,
and his urge to dominate may, in some measure, be attributable
to the experiences of those years.

The latter phase of this period of exile was spent in the
territory of the Mthethwa chief Dingiswayo. Here Shaka found
himself at the center of military activity and political change,
for Dingiswayo was engaged in subjugating his weaker neighbors
and establishing a confederacy of chief-tainships under Mthethwa
overlordship.

Upon reaching adulthood, Shaka was drafted into the Mthethwa
army and rapidly distinguished himself. By 1816 he had been
promoted to a position of command and had won Dingiswayo's
patronage. With this backing Shaka plotted successfully for the
assassination of his own half brother Sigujana, who had
succeeded Senzangakona, and then seized the Zulu chieftainship
for himself.

Leader of the Zulu

As chief of the Zulu people, Shaka stood in a client
relationship to Dingiswayo, but after the Mthethwa chief's death
(ca. 1818) Shaka launched an independent career of conquest. A
master of strategy and battle tactics, he injected a new
ferocity into warfare by subjecting his men to iron discipline
and training them in novel methods of close combat. Shields were
exploited as weapons for disarming the enemy, and short-handled
stabbing spears were introduced in place of the traditional
throwing assegais.

Shaka also built as he conquered. His regiments were not
enrolled territorially; instead, as he expanded his domains, he
drafted the men of the conquered chiefdoms into age regiments
under a system of centralized command. Thus traditional local
loyalties were deprived of any means of military expression, and
the men of fighting age were made wholly dependent on the will
of their new ruler. Even marriage was prohibited except to men
of regiments that had earned this privilege by service in arms.

Shaka's most decisive victory (ca. 1818/1819) was probably that
against the Ndwandwe chief, Zwide, who had been Dingiswayo's
most dangerous rival. After that, there was no serious obstacle
to the expansion of Shaka's power, and by 1824 his rule extended
over the country east of the Drakensberg from the southern
frontiers of present-day Swaziland to the lands of Natal beyond
the Tugela River. Dingiswayo had established a Mthethwa
overlordship; Shaka created a centralized monarchy in which the
chief-doms of the past were obliterated except in certain
privileged enclaves and on the marches of his kingdom, where
some chiefly lines seem to have retained a measure of local
authority under a client relationship.

Repercussions of Shakan Militarism

Shaka's influence was not confined to the region of his own
conquests. In several instances chiefs who were the victims of
his attacks, or who feared his wrath, fled with their followers
and began careers of plunder that contributed to disruption far
beyond the area in which the Zulu armies were operating. This
upheaval (the Difaqane) affected the patterns of population
distribution over a large part of southern and central Africa.

In Natal and in the central plateau region the devastation was
such that the Afrikaners (South Africans of European descent)
and Boers (South Africans of Dutch or Huguenot descent) found
apparently empty lands awaiting them when they spread out from
the Cape in 1836-1838. Elsewhere, either in imitation of Shaka's
military state or in response to the critical conditions
resulting from the Difaqane, new polities were constructed by
the Bantu-speaking peoples which profoundly influenced the
history of southern and central Africa.

By sending refugees spilling southward, Shaka's campaigns
increased the pressures on the already-troubled Cape eastern
frontier. And by permitting white traders and hunters to
establish themselves at Port Natal in 1824, he nurtured the
seeds of a new British colony that would ultimately annex
Zululand and carry it into a white-controlled Union of South
Africa.

Shaka lived long enough to have only a limited awareness of the
changes wrought by his career. In 1827, after the death of his
mother, he imposed extravagant mourning ceremonies that left
loyalty strained, and in 1828 he was assassinated by two of his
half brothers, Dingane and Mhlangana, acting in conspiracy with
his personal attendant, Mbopa. However, the Zulu kingdom
remained an important factor in South African politics until its
defeat by Britain in 1879, and a sense of Zulu nationhood
survives to this day.

~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~

Shaka was a great Zulu king and conqueror. He lived in an area
of south-east Africa between the Drakensberg and the Indian
Ocean, a region populated by many independent Nguni chiefdoms.
During his brief reign more than a hundred chiefdoms were
brought together in a Zulu kingdom which survived not only the
death of its founder but later military defeat and calculated
attempts to break it up.

Early life

Shaka was a son of Senzangakhona, ruler of an insignificant
small chiefdom, the Zulu. His mother was Nandi, the daughter of
a Langeni chief. Information about Shaka's early years is
gleaned entirely from oral sources. It is claimed that Shaka was
born into Senzangakhona's household but that the couple were not
yet married according to traditional custom. A more credible
account is that the relationship between Nandi and Senzangakhona
was illicit, and that Shaka was born in Langeni territory at the
Nguga homestead of Nandi's uncle. Shaka's name is said to stem
from Senzangakhona's claim that Nandi was not pregnant but was
suffering from an intestinal condition caused by the iShaka
beetle. Despite his attempts to deny paternity, Senzangakhona
eventually installed Nandi as his third wife. Shaka thus spent
his earliest years at his father's esiKlebeni homestead near
present Babanango, in the hallowed locality known as the
EmaKhosini or Burial-place of the Kings, where Senzangakhona's
forebears, the descendants of Zulu (Nkosinkulu), had been chiefs
for generations. The relationship of Senzangakhona and Nandi
seems to have been unhappy and ended in the chieftain driving
Nandi from his court.

Nandi and her son sought sanctuary in the Mhlathuze Valley of
the Langeni people. Here, growing up as a fatherless child,
Shaka seems to have been the victim of humiliation and cruel
treatment by the Langeni boys. At that time there were two
strong rival Nguni groups, the Mthethwa led by the paramount
chief Dingiswayo, and the Ndwandwe under the ferocious Zwide.
Later, probably at the time of the Great Famine, known as the
Madlantule (c.1802), Shaka was taken to the Mthethwa people,
where shelter was found in the home of Nandi's aunt. He thus
grew up in the court of Dingiswayo, who welcomed them with
friendliness. Shaka, however, suffered much from the bullying
and teasing of the Mthethwa boys, too, who resented his claims
to chiefly descent.

As he grew to manhood, Shaka began to discover new talents and
faculties. Outwardly, he was tall and powerfully built, and his
skill and daring gave him a natural mastery over the youths in
his age group; inwardly, he was developing a thirst for power.
Probably when he was about twenty-three years old, he was
drafted into one of the Mthethwa regiments where he found a
satisfaction he had never known before. With the impi in the
iziCwe regiment, he had the companionship he had previously
lacked, while the battlefield provided a stadium in which he
could demonstrate his talents and courage. His outstanding deeds
of courage attracted the attention of his overlord and, rising
rapidly in Dingiswayo's army, he became one of his foremost
commanders. At this time, Shaka was given the name Nodumehlezi
(the one who when seated causes the earth to rumble). While in
the Mthethwa army Shaka became engrossed in problems of strategy
and battle tactics, and Dingiswayo contributed much toward
Shaka's later accomplishments in war. Militarism was thereafter
to be a way of life for him, and one that he was to inflict on
thousands of others.

Shaka usurps the Zulu Chiefdom

On the death of Shaka's father (c. 1816), Dingiswayo lent his
young protégé the military support necessary to oust and
assassinate his senior brother Sigujana, and make himself
chieftain of the Zulu, although he remained a vassal of
Dingiswayo. But, as Dingiswayo's favourite, he seems to have
been granted an unusual amount of freedom to carve out a bigger
principality for himself by conquering and assimilating his
neighbours, including the Buthelezi clan and the Langeni of his
boyhood days.

Dingiswayo's death

According to the diary of Henry Francis Fynn, Dingiswayo's death
(c.1818) was the result of Shaka's treachery, though firm
testimony of this is lacking. However, it is known that when
Dingiswayo fought his last battle, Shaka did not arrive at the
scene until after his overlord's capture. He thus retained his
forces intact. Zwide later murdered Dingiswayo, and, when the
leaderless Mthethwa state collapsed, Shaka immediately assumed
leadership and began conquering surrounding chiefdoms himself,
adding their forces to his own and building up a new kingdom.

The defeat of the Ndwandwe

Zwide decided to smash his new rival. After a first expedition
had been defeated by the superior control and strategies of the
Zulu at Gqokoli Hill, Zwide, in April 1818, sent all his army
into Zululand. This time Shaka wore out the invaders by
pretending he was retreating and drawing Zwide's forces deep
into his own territory; then, when he had successfully exhausted
the invaders, he flung his own regiments on them and defeated
them conclusively at the Mhlathuze river. This defeat shattered
the Ndwandwe state. Part of the main Ndwandwe force under
Shoshangane, together with the Jere under Zwangendaba, the
Maseko under Ngwane, and the Msene led by Nxaba, fled
northwards. The survivors of the main Ndwandwe force settled for
a time on the upper Pongola River. In 1826, under Zwide's
successor, Sikhunyane, they again fought the Zulu, but were
totally routed. The majority then submitted to Shaka. He was
able to recruit additional warriors from these sources and
proceeded to train them in his own methods of close combat.

Shaka's supremacy

By then, Shaka had no major rival in the area of present day
KwaZulu/Natal. During his brief reign, which lasted only ten
years after his final defeat of the Ndwandwe, his regiments
continuously went on campaign, steadily extending their assaults
further afield as the areas near at hand were stripped of their
cattle. If a chiefdom resisted, it was conquered and either
destroyed or, like the Thembu and Chunu, driven off as landless
refugees. When chiefdom submitted, he left local administration
in the hands of the reigning chief or another member of the
traditional ruling family appointed by himself.

The Zulu Military System

Once in power Shaka began reorganizing the forces of his people
in accordance with ideas he had developed as a warrior in
Dingiswayo's army.

The assegai. He had seen that the traditional type of spear, a
long-handled assegai thrown from a distance, was no good for the
regulated fighting in close formation he had in mind. A group of
warriors who held on to their assegais instead of hurling them,
and who moved right up to the enemy behind the shelter of a
barrier of shields would have its opponents at its mercy and
would be able to accomplish complete victory. Having proved the
advantages of the new tactics, Shaka armed his warriors with
short-handled stabbing spears and trained them to move up to
their opponents in close formation with their body-length
cowhide shields forming an almost impenetrable barrier to
anything thrown at them.

The formation most generally used was crescent-shaped. A number
of regiments extending several ranks deep formed a dense body
known as the chest (isifuba), while on each side a regiment
moved forward forming the horns. As the horns curved inward
around the enemy, the main body would advance killing all those
who could not break through the encompassing lines.

Discipline. By means of much drilling and discipline, Shaka
built up his forces, which soon became the terror of the land.
Shaka prohibited the wearing of sandals, toughened his warriors'
feet by making them run barefoot over rough thorny ground and in
so doing secured their greater mobility. His war cry was
`Victory or death!' and he kept his impi on continuous military
campaigns until he thought they had earned the right to wear the
headring ( isicoco) of manhood. Then they were formally
dissolved and allowed to marry.

The male amabutho. The young men were taken away to be enrolled
alongside others from all sections of the kingdom in an
appropriate amabutho, or age-regiment. This produced a sense of
common identity amongst them. Each of these amabutho had its own
name and was lodged at one of the royal households, which became
military communities as well as retaining their traditional
functions. Each military settlement had a herd of royal cattle
assigned to it, from which the young men were supplied with
meat. The hides of the cattle were used to provide the shields
of the warriors and an attempt was made to select cattle with
distinctive skin colouring for each amabutho.

The female amabutho. Numbers of the young women of the kingdom
were assembled at the military settlements. Officially, they
were wards of the king. They were organized in female
equivalents of the male amabutho and took part in ceremonial
dancing and displays. When one of the male amabutho was given
permission to marry, a female amabutho would be broken up and
the women given out as brides to the warriors. Until such time,
however, sexual intercourse between members of the male and
female age regiments was forbidden. Transgressions were punished
by death.

The royal women. Each settlement contained a section of royal
women headed by a formidable woman, usually one of Shaka's
aunts. Shaka, however, dreaded producing a legitimate heir. He
never married and women found pregnant by him were put to death.
His households were thus not dominated by wives but by stern
senior women of the royal family. In the king's absence,
administrative authority was wielded jointly by the female ruler
of the settlement and by an induna who was usually a favourite
of the king. The military system thus helped develop a strong
sense of identity in the kingdom as a whole.

The traditional leaders of the subject chiefdoms still held
local administrative authority, and on the dissolution of the
amabutho the young men would return to live in their community
of origin. Thus, the sense of identity of these subject
chiefdoms was not entirely lost, but remained an important
element in the later politics of the Zulu kingdom.

The military indunas or captains, as trusted favourites of the
king, received many cattle from him and were able to build up
large personal followings. These developments resulted in the
evolution of powerful figures in later reigns with strong local
power bases that they had been able to build up because of royal
appointments and favours.

KwaBulawayo. Shaka's first capital was on the banks of the Mhodi,
a small tributary of the Mkhumbane River in the Babanango
district. He named his great place KwaBulawayo (`at the place of
the murder'). As his kingdom grew, he built a far bigger
KwaBulawayo, a royal household of about 1,400 huts, in the
Mhlathuze valley, some 27 km from the present town of Eshowe.

Economic and social changes. The development of the military
system caused major economic and social changes. That so much
youth was concentrated at the royal barracks resulted in a
massive transfer of economic potential to a centralized state.
However, the cattle wealth of the whole community throughout the
kingdom was greatly improved; even though most of the herds were
owned by the king and his chiefs and indunas, all shared in the
pride roused by the magnificence of the royal herds as well as
the pride of belonging to the unequalled military power of Zulu.

Effects of Shaka's wars. His wars were accompanied by great
slaughter and caused many migrations. Their effects were felt
even far north of the Zambezi River. Because they feared Shaka,
leaders like Zwangendaba, Mzilikazi, and Shoshangane moved
northwards far into the central African interior and in their
turn sowed war and destruction before developing their own
kingdoms. Some estimate that during his reign Shaka caused the
death of more than a million people. Shaka's wars between 1818
and 1828 contributed to a series of forced migrations known in
various parts of southern Africa as the Mfecane, Difaqane,
Lifaqane, or Fetcani. Groups of refugees from Shaka's assaults,
first Hlubi and Ngwane clans, later followed by the Mantatees
and the Matabele of Mzilikazi, crossed the Drakensberg to the
west, smashing chiefdoms in their path. Famine and chaos
followed the wholesale extermination of populations and the
destruction of herds and crops between the Limpopo and the
Gariep River. Old chiefdoms vanished and new ones were created.

The white traders of Port Natal

By the time the first white traders arrived at Port Natal in
1824, Shaka was in control of a centralized monarchy, which
spanned the entire eastern coastal belt from the Pongola River
in the north to the lands beyond the Tugela in the south. That
year, Henry Francis Fynn and Francis Farewell visited Shaka. In
1825, when Lieutenant James King paid him a visit, Shaka sent a
goodwill delegation to Major J. Cloete, Cape government
representative at Port Elizabeth. Shaka accorded the white
traders most favoured treatment, ceded them land, and permitted
them to build a settlement at Port Natal. He was curious about
their technological developments, was anxious to learn much more
about warfare, and he was especially interested in the culture
they represented. Moreover, he was alert to the advantages that
their trade might bring to him.

In 1826, in order to be closer and more accessible to the
settlers at Port Natal, Shaka built a large military barracks at
Dukuza, (‘the place where one gets lost'). It was 80 km further
south of his previous royal residence kwaBulawayo, on the site
of the present day town of Stanger. During his lifetime, there
were no conflicts between the whites and the Zulus, as Shaka did
not want to precipitate clashes with the military forces of the
Cape colonial government. H F Fynn, who knew him well, found him
intelligent and often amiable, and mentioned occasions that
leave no doubt that Shaka was capable of generosity. Freed from
the restrictions that limited most chiefs, Shaka acted as an
undisputed, almighty ruler. A cruel tyrant, he had men executed
with a nod of his head. The loyalties of his people were
severely strained as the frequent cruelties of their great king
increased steadily. The climax came with the death of his mother
Nandi in October 1827, huge numbers were put to death during the
mourning ceremonies because they showed insufficient grief; and
his armies were sent out to force the surrounding chiefdoms to
grieve.

Taking advantage of the absence of his armies, on 22 September
1828, his bodyguard Mbopha, and his half-brothers Dingane and
Mhlangana, stabbed Shaka near his military barracks at Dukuza.
As the great King Shaka's life ebbed away, he called out to his
brother Dingane:

“Hey brother! You kill me, thinking you will rule, but the
swallows will do that.”

He meant the white people, because they made their houses of
mud, like the swallows. This was too much for his assailants and
they leapt upon him, stabbing. According to members of his
family, Shaka's last words were:

“Are you stabbing me, kings of the earth? You will come to an
end through killing one another.”

Hastily they buried his body in a grain-pit nearby. Having died
without an heir, Dingane succeeded him, but Shaka's prophecy
haunted him and ever after that, he was wary of white people.
Under Shaka's successors, Dingane, Mpande, and Cetshwayo the
Zulu monarchy profoundly influenced the course of South African
history.

~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~

Ridiculed as a bastard child, few believed that the young Shaka
Zulu would have much of a future. But despite his difficult
childhood, Shaka not only became a legendary leader of the Zulu
people, but his ingenious military tactics and inventions in
weaponry are credited in some ways with preserving Zulu
heritage.

Shaka’s childhood can only be described as miserable. He was
born to a high-ranking chieftain named Senzangakona, but his
mother Nandi was an orphan from a nearby ethnic clan known as
the Langeni. Unfortunately, Nandi gave birth to Shaka out of
wedlock. The stigmatism of a bastard child might not have
persisted if the relationship between Shaka’s parents had not
dissolved. Scorned by Senzangakona’s clan, Nandi returned to her
family home with young Shaka. The Langeni did not receive their
wayward member warmly, and Nandi and Shaka were forced into
exile.

While growing up, Shaka was continually the butt of cruel jokes
and pranks due to his familial circumstances. This constant
badgering over the course of several years had embittered Shaka.
So, when Chief Dingiswayo of the Mthelthwa summoned him for
military duty, Shaka soon found an outlet for his anger.

Shaka quickly proved himself to be a capable soldier. He
excelled in all his military manoeuvres and showed a talent for
leading the troops. Shaka’s talent was so distinguished that
upon the death of Shaka’s father, Chief Dingiswayo named Shaka
to replace his father as chief of the Zulu. Shaka immediately
tasked himself with reorganizing the Zulu fighting forces. Shaka
instituted new tactical manoeuvres that outsmarted an enemy
accustomed to traditional tribal warfare. He also introduced a
new short dagger called the assegai. Traditional warfare
dictated that opposing clans would throw long spears at each
other before running in the opposite direction. The clan with
the most men still living declared victory. Shaka found such
tactics to be acts of cowardice. His new assegai forced his men
to approach the enemy face to face before stabbing him to his
death.

To keep his military ranks at optimum levels, Shaka began to
absorb and assimilate the enemy after victory. After conquering
a village, all living adult males in good health were forced
into military service. Shaka demanded absolute obedience of his
men and would not tolerate any weakness or cowardice. Any
disobedience was immediately punishable by death.

And Shaka never hesitated to kill. The first villages he
attacked with his Zulu forces were those of the Langeni. In
retaliation for the cruel treatment of him and his mother, Shaka
killed every woman and child before burning the villages to the
ground. For ten years, Shaka’s Zulu fighters conquered village
after village with the same intensity. Shaka’s Zulu tribe became
the most powerful kingdom in all of 19th century southern
Africa.

But the more victories Shaka earned, the more deranged he
became. Afraid any offspring would threaten his power, Shaka
never took any wives. Given his obsession with his mother, Nandi,
scholars believe he never had sexual relations with any woman.
When Shaka’s mother was dying, he was in such grief that he
ordered several men to be executed. Such chaos ensued that
several thousand men eventually died. Upon his mother’s death,
Shaka then ordered his Zulu clan into mourning. During this
period, Shaka prohibited anyone from working in the fields,
resulting in mass starvation among the Zulu.

Shaka’s policies as leader of the Zulu have simultaneously
caused both destruction and preservation. His thirst for blood
and endless battles resulted in massive migrations of tribes as
far north as modern-day Tanzania who sought to avoid
confrontation with his Zulu. His post-victory assimilation
techniques led to the destruction of the identity of many unique
southern African ethnic groups. Consumed with a desire to
conquer, Shaka never fostered stability. Upon his death, ethnic
warfare ensued as his assimilated Zulus began to splinter.

But Shaka is also credited with protecting southern African
heritage from the Europeans. In 1824 the first Europeans visited
Shaka. During this meeting, Shaka was maliciously stabbed by one
of his own Zulu. The Europeans treated Shaka and instantly
earned his devoted respect. Although Shaka did sign over land to
the Europeans, he reportedly was unaware that he had agreed to
any permanent deal. Ironically, the Europeans agreed to help
Shaka continue his wars of dominance, but Shaka’s success only
fueled the European’s fear of him as a brutal warrior.

Today Shaka is revered as the leader who gave birth to the
fighting spirit of the Zulu, allowing them to persevere amid
European domination of their homeland. The memory of Shaka even
lives on in countryside where he waged his battles. Jeff Guy,
Head of the Department of History at the University of Natal in
Durban, South Africa, notes that many prominent rock
outcroppings are associated with Shaka Zulu. The Great Cave Rock
on the south side of Durban Bay is one example. According to
Guy, a Nongoma magistrate heard a story that Shaka would march
his troops down to the Bay and force them to fight against the
crashing waves. Shaka would watch the rigorous exercise from his
perch on the Great Cave Rock. Apparently Shaka perched on
various rocks quite frequently to watch his troops train.

After his mother’s death and the subsequent starvation, it was
clear to the Zulu that Shaka had lost touch with reality. In
1828, Shaka’s half-brothers stabbed him to death. Legend has it
that they threw his body into a cooking pot and left him for the
vultures.